This slide should stimulate exploration of how these activities may be carried out, e.g., regular reporting of vital statistics, or investigation of an outbreak such as the West Nile viral encephalitis in the greater New York City area, or a citizen-requested investigation of a perceived cluster of cancer cases around a school.

Assessment includes three aspects of health and health problems:

-the health status of the population (disease rates, birth and death information)

-threats to health (environmental risk factors of all kinds)